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Individual RAID drive diagnostics


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I've been having some low level, hardware seeming freezes of Windows (got another thread going on that), and one of the suspects is the RAID boot array. One of the drives in the array has been speed downgraded by the Nvidia controller from "SATA Generation 2 - 3G" to "SATA Generation 1 - 1.5G" because of "excessive transfer errors to the device". In addition to SMART data, I think these Western Digital drives also compile some extended reliability data that can be accessed with some downloaded WD tools. Since they're in a RAID array though, I can't access this info. I tried running the tools in windows and got a BSOD, I assume on account of the drives being in RAID. Is there a way to do diagnostics on the individual drives? WD has a dos version, and theoretically I could turn off RAID in BIOS, boot to the DOS disk, and check them that way, but I'm afraid the diagnostic utility might change something on the individual disks and ruin the array. I don't want to be the first person to do this. I've reinstalled Windows too many times in the last couple months. Anyone have any good words?

 

I found an interesting piece of information on Western Digital's site about the RAID edition of their drives vs. the desktop editions (like I'm using): the desktop editions will sometimes enter a deep diagnostic state that can last up to a couple minutes when they detect internal errors. RAID controllers only wait around about 7 seconds for individual drives to self-diagnose, and after that they're "dropped from the array". Even if one of my drives entered a "deep diagnostic" state, could that be considered normal, or a sign of something more serious?

 

thanks, Jo

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Has anyone tried disabling an array in bios and running the manufacturer's checkup utility, and been able to reenable the array to healthy status after?
It might work but its ALWAYS a smart idea to backup your data .. Its the FIRST thing I do when I have a feeling that a drive is going or might be a problem..

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u can disable the array it will be fine ive pulled my raid array from one computer to a completely different one with a different raid controller just enabled raid it found the stripe fine and booted to windows and copied my data off the array and no i didn't boot to the array it was an ide boot drive. it dont care if it gets turned on or off all that does is change the mode of the controller on the board

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OK, so if anyone finds this and wonders, I ran the Western Digital DOS based diagnostic, booted from CD, first with then without the RAID array enabled in BIOS and both times it ran without problems, and both times it detected no errors. I enabled the array again and it booted up without incident. I ran a Windows based disk scan on the array and everything checks out. Might have been a different story had the diagnostic found an error and repaired it. Drives are WD2500KS-00MJB0. Yes, I did back up my data.

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